Even though intelligence brings evolutionary benefits, it hasn't been worth the time and energy costs for the vast majority of animals. So why did humans end up in an evolutionary niche which rewarded marginal increases in intelligence?

Watch the full episode with Carl Shulman:

Interesting speculation.

This dude sounds increasingly dumber by the minute.. animals are intellectually stagnant?? LOL 😂

This is embarrassingly wrong and outdated information about non human intelligence

Wait, but primates do have culture. I remember reading some book by Fran de Waal about Chimpanzees passing culture along. And it does pass generationally--like the Japanese macaques and washing sweet potatoes.

The paradox for primates is the LLMs haven't moved the needle. 👇

Evolution discovered the one niche where overthinking had positive EV

If an animal occupies an easily predictable, stable, role in the ecosystem (herbivore, croc, shark) then it has no use for intelligence. An animal that is a generalist (environment, food sources, etc), needs to be adaptive and have intelligence.

Because we have hands with opposable thumbs